The Great Redeemer

Next time somebody has the pip with you,

pour them a Great Redeemer. One taste

of its rich fruit cake flavours and dry hops

and all will be forgiven.

Mangrove Jacks

Welcome back, dear friends, to The Art of Caesura!

It feels like I've been gone for ages! My fiance and I took a nice holiday to Amsterdam and then up to Northern Ireland over the past week, before I started a new job on Monday. So it has been a busy but fun week.

This is another beer-filled episode as I will regale you with my latest brewing efforts.

Longtime readers will be familiar with my endeavor to brew each of the Mangrove Jack's craft series beers. This is now my fourth one. It is called "The Great Redeemer Old Ale", and according to its particulars it's a mahogany ale with an ABV of approx 5.5% and an IBU of 26-32.

I'm excited to give this one a go after my last one didn't turn out as great as I had hoped .

I made one major change this time. When brewing beer, you add sugar at two different times for two different reasons. The first time is when your getting started, you add sugar to the malt, and water to give the yeast something to chew on. This is the most important time, because it is this sugar that the yeast will convert into alcohol. That being the case, it is important to use a type of sugar that yeast can breakdown easily, so most people use the simple sugar "dextrose". I have found it difficult to get dextrose cheaply and easily around these parts, so I've been using the "left-handed version" of this sugar: glucose. My understanding is that by using these simple sugars, the yeast can more cleanly convert it into alcohol and you're left with less residue in the bottle.

Well, this time, now that I've dipped my toes into this beer making process a few times and am getting more comfortable with it all, I've tried using a different fermenting sugar. Seeing as how this is a rich, malty, old English-style ale, I used mostly (700g) of glucose, but then used 300g of brown sugar. My hope is that some of the molasses of the brown sugar will linger adding to the flavour.

We'll have to wait 6 weeks to see!